A massive amount of content for the Halo franchise has been finding its way online following what appears to be a falling out among teams working to restore it. A team called Digsite has been working with 343 Industries, now rebranded by Microsoft as Halo Studios to restore lost and cut content that spans over 25 years. Their efforts included bringing back classic multiplayer maps for Halo Combat Evolved but also a lost Macworld demo from 1999 and the team even had access to the original demo for Halo 2 that was famously shown at E3 2003. Digsite states that while it is their content that has been leaked they, nor recently left team members, leaked it.
There is a manifesto that went with it as well that is a parody of the Deus Ex 1 intro LMAOhttps://t.co/l6imwZ5pJk pic.twitter.com/yeHmDmow3X
— 𝘑𝘖𝘏𝘕 (@DogbrainLudus) December 26, 2024
- “While I don’t like my own unfinished work going out, these kind of leaks are common enough in the world of prerelease/modding where my stance is “it is what it is, hopefully other modders can do some cool things with what’s here.” Guardian Forest files are out, go nuts”
- “Should clarify “the did this” is a didn’t do the leak. We don’t know who uploaded it. Sorry i’ve been up for like 20 hours lmao, got home from the movies and saw the leak and have been up since answering questions haha”
- “Digsite is (probably) done? Either way, it’s been a nice run, folks. We’ll see what happens further.”
Playable beta builds of Halo 1 just dropped today, from before the game became an FPS pic.twitter.com/SLMy2cfo7r
— Vinícius Medeiros (@VinciusMedeiro6) December 26, 2024
The team claims that Microsoft neither paid them for their efforts nor provided resources and it appears that someone else decided enough was enough so a massive amount of content is now out in the wild for the PC community to do with as it wishes. The team also acknowledges that these projects began as volunteer work but over the years demands increased with no compensation or support. It’s been reported that around 100 GB of data has been posted online, which includes fully playable demos. Credit goes to VGC for covering the many posts from the team, and leakers, on social media, some of which include download links and are still only a fraction of what has been posted.
I and the rest of the team responsible for crash site, e3, alpha moon and most h1\h2 content quit BC it was made clear to us that E3 was more successful than Microsoft expected, and they want us to deliver another release on that level, still with no pay, and no resources, at all
— Neo Te Aika (@neoteaika) December 26, 2024
— Manny Calavera (@MannyCalavera12) December 26, 2024
Secondly which is probably the bigger elephant in the room is why I left. I had 2 reasons, one personal and one I guess moral. I could not justify what was being expected of me without it being a full time job, there was no world I could maintain the quality bar for H3+ well.
— Sean T (@BajatomicBlast) December 26, 2024
As a result as well, I decided that my time with MCC is done. So now what?
— Sean T (@BajatomicBlast) December 26, 2024
For Halo, the only thing I will be doing is occasional updates to CE+ on Xbox. As of now the MCC release will *no longer be supported.* I still enjoy CE+ and will continue supporting it as long as I can.